"Cable and X-Force" #7 from Dennis Hopeless and Salvador Larocca is an action movie comic that has some good ideas and a few well played moments but ultimately falls thin in too many departments. The team has its mission of breaking out an alien under the care of S.W.O.R.D. as well as getting his ship back. There’s a cameo from Cyclops that doesn’t quite fit and there’s a heroine in her underwear when I wish there wasn’t.

Dennis Hopeless does well to connect this team across multiple situations into the one mission. The scene with Cable and Cyclops feels flat and superfluous; the Dr. Nemesis and Forge stuff is there because it has to be (though it’s mildly fun); the section with Boom Boom and the alien feels a little icky; and it’s the back and forth between Domino and Colossus that wins the issue. Hopeless writes some amazing dialogue for Domino to showcase her fragile state of mind. This sequence is high stakes and fun, delivers character and was engaging on multiple levels. The other sections can't compete.

Salvador Larocca’s artwork gets the story across, but it lacks many superb moments. The thick ink lines he uses to wrinkle his characters or delineate parts of their body too often mars them. These lines are not natural for physique and end up looking like they’re traced off a more nuanced line we can no longer see, so the context is lost. It’s also a shame that Frank D’Armata’s colors don’t seem interested in helping to tell the story. So many pages are bland and even when an intriguing element is put in front of him, everything comes out feeling like it’s been stuck in the back of the washing machine for weeks.

"Cable and X-Force" #7 continues an interesting mission for the team but it also shows how uninteresting some of these characters are right now. The heady connection between Domino and Colossus is mesmerizing and this should come to the fore. Much like Rick Remender used Psylocke and Archangel in "Uncanny X-Force” as the foundational base, this title needs to find its heart and core and then build from there instead of just using action set pieces in lieu of anything meaningful.